"He'll fine you ten dollars and costs. If you had written it a little bit larger it would have been twenty-five dollars and costs. Now get down and rub it out before it sets, and do it quick, before the geyser plays again." And so Maw got down on her knees and rubbed out her first feeling of identity. And the commissioner fined her ten dollars and costs in due time--for Maw was honest as the day and didn't try to evade the punishment that she thought was hers. "I ought to have knew better," she said "me, a woman of my years. I don't begretch the money, and I think the young man was right, and so was the judge, and I'll never do it again. The commissioner said that I looked like a woman of sense. I always did have sense before. I think it must be these mountains, or the moon, or something. I never felt that way before." It was this young man who walked down to Maw's camp to take her number. It was there that he met Cynthy, and I am inclined to think that she took his number at the time. Later on I often saw them walking together, past the great log hotel with its jazz architecture, and beyond the fringe of pine that separates the camp trippers from the O'Cleaves, who live in the hotels. The young ranger was contrite about arresting Maw, but that latter was the first to exonerate him. "You only done right," said she. "I done what I knew was wrong. Now, Hattie, and you, Roweny, don't you let this spoil your trip none at all. It's once your Maw has allowed herself the privilege of being an old fool, the first time in her life. I dunno but it was worth ten dollars, at that." And so I suppose we should let Cynthy and the young ranger go out into the moonshine to learn how the algae grow, of how many different colors. Consider the algae of the geysers, how they grow. Solomon in all his glory had nothing on the algae; and the Queen of Sheba nothing on Cynthy. [Illustration: "--and The Queen of Sheba had nothing on Cynthy."--p. 22.] Sometimes, even yet, Maw and I talk about the time she was fined ten dollars for writing her name. "It might have been worse," said she to me. "When we was coming through some place a ways back we heard about a man there that was sentenced to be hung after he had been tried several times. His friends done what they could with the governor, but it didn't come to nothing. So after a while his lawyer come in the jail, and he says: 'Bill, I can't do nothing more for you. On next Monday morning at six o'clock you've got to be hung by the neck until you're dead, and may God have mercy on your soul.' 'Well, all I can say,' says Bill, 'that's a fine way to begin the week, ain't it now?'"